


Our Lady Of Broken Hearts

by ieroangel



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-18
Updated: 2013-06-18
Packaged: 2017-12-15 08:33:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/847466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ieroangel/pseuds/ieroangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>three POVs: Lyn-Z, Gerard, and then Frank</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Lady Of Broken Hearts

LINDSEY

“THERE was a lady all skin and bone;   
Sure such a lady was never known :   
It happen'd upon a certain day,   
This lady went to church to pray. 

When she came to the church stile,   
There she did rest a little while ;   
When she came to the churchyard,   
There the bells so loud she heard. 

When she came to the church door,   
She stopt to rest a little more ;   
When she came the church within,   
The parson pray'd 'gainst pride and sin. 

On looking up, on looking down,   
She saw a dead man on the ground ;   
And from his nose unto his chin,   
The worms crawl'd out, the worms crawl'd in.

Then she unto the parson said,   
Shall I be so when I am dead :   
O yes ! O yes, the parson said,   
You will be so when you are dead.”  
\- Originally from Gammer Gurton’s Garland, 1784

Have you ever felt as if you were background noise in someone else’s romance film? Surrounded by those who kiss and you are only the girl who sits on the bench while the actors dance in front of you in the spotlight…but no one seems to notice…because I have not.  
I am no last-song-on-the-soundtrack, I am the one that is set out front and center, and sometimes, I hate myself for it. The girl on the bench, he is not a girl, and he should be front in center, and he was still the actor in the spotlight…alas he was not acting, though he could pretend forever that it was never real. You see, of course mine was real, but everything is real, some things are just realer than others are.  
I love him. But sometimes you have to sacrifice love for greater love…and that is why I did it.  
It was October 30th of 2013, the year that love could not even be faked any longer, by either…I knew he loved him once…and perhaps I could pull it off, even if it meant…well…breaking certain things.  
However, I am meant for breaking things. Broken people break things quite well, and I am quite broken up myself. Leave my barren thoughts for now…what you must see is the main event, 9 pm, coming home, tired, and there he was…crying, and it was the fifth time that week that I had found him like that, and it was always over one thing…  
“Gerard,” I said, softly, and he looked up at me with quiet red eyes.   
He had been the one to choose to end it, and yet how he cried over it, no, not mascara-running-pretty-tears you shed over your petty sophomore year breakup, no, this was messy, smeary, whispering-self-hatred-at-a-mirror, ragged crying that you do in the dark because it is too ugly to see your own face in the light.  
“Gerard,” I said again, and then placed the ring on the table.  
He looked at it as if it was something to be feared and unsure of, like ‘was I really doing this?’ Was I?  
And I turned around, easily and smoothly so that I could not feel myself break.  
The sound the door made when it shut was the thing that made my heart break upon itself, falling into a cacophony of smeared sobs of eyeliner and empty casts you wrap around your heart and there is no one there to sign them because they all left a long time ago.  
I think it was midnight when I made the phone call I would have to.  
The phone rang, three times, and it was on the brink of the fourth when he picked up. I was expecting loud music, friends, a hint of a smile in his voice, but there was only silence, and his breath, and all I could think to say was  
“Happy birthday.”  
He didn’t even respond. We had barely spoken, even on the tour with Death Spells, it had been awkward eye contact and no smiles whatsoever.  
“What do you want?” he said, his voice cracking.  
“He’s yours,” I said, and my throat swelled with tears. “I know that you love him so you can have him, I-I gave him back my ring, you’ve waited long enough, he’s yours, so fucking take him, Frank!”  
“You didn’t,” Iero said in a low whisper.  
“Happy birthday,” I said, and I hung up the phone.  
He could have Bandit. God, I loved her. God, I fucking loved Gerard. But I was being selfish…no one ever even loved me even though I’ll only ever always be the underdog in this game of love, and who are we taught to cheer on?   
I was taught to cheer for the one who is right, and I am the wronger in this. I watched him cry after we got married, I knew, and so did every one of the fans…  
Ha! As if some girl from some shitty band could pull this off! Or maybe I was a beard…secretly in love with some punk chick…  
Gerard loved me. I was not fake. You know when you are a lie and I am not one. But Frank was real, all real, and it broke my heart worse than what it is now.   
You can take love and be happy for an instant or you can give love and be happy for twice that.   
So I drew a barren shell around my heart and a cast around myself, though with pen and paper naught is real.  
It was all in vain, for they fell to pieces on the night of March 22nd, 2014. I was living in New York, barely alive, in a run-down hotel, and it happened, at the exact anniversary of the death of the band.  
It was the song called Death Can Hurt for a Reason, and it was from the album that had never been released, because of the breakup, and they were singing it on a goddamned YouTube video in goddamned New Jersey, happy.  
“And suicide can turn to ash tonight…”  
And it was the last verse, and they said what I had heard only a thousand times.  
“WE. ARE. MY. CHEMICAL. ROMANCE.”  
And Gerard kissed Frank, right then and there.  
And however ashen suicide can be, the pills can make things go black at exactly the right moment… 

 

 

GERARD

I cannot cry over Frank Iero.  
I cannot cry over Frank Iero.  
But as always, I am a terrible liar.  
And by the time Lindsey is home my eyes are smeared with regret and my heart is abashed with the embarrassment of sobriety during one of these episodes. Yes, I have been sober, I swear to god, I swear TO FUCKING GOD.  
But as always, I am a terrible liar.  
It began on the date of March the twenty-second, at 4:23 p.m. in New Jersey, at least, and I was going to meet up with Frank Iero, for coffee, and talk about Seventeen Unabashed Virtues Of Broken Seraphs, which was the running name for ‘MCR5,’ but it was not wholly decided yet.  
Frank waved at me from the inside of the coffee shop. He had always been like that, outwardly completely badass, and then supercutesy once you got to know him. And he had the most infectious little giggle you’ve ever heard, I swear.  
“Hey,” I said, once I got inside.  
Years ago, this would’ve been a bar, shots of whiskey instead of espresso, a greasy-looking man behind the bar with meaningful tattoos that hold no meaning instead of a cute college girl working for her art school degree, and a smile on both our faces instead of a frown.  
My Chemical Romance felt dead. I didn’t know why. The fans were still alive and kicking, the music was great, and I don’t know what had gone wrong. Was it the topics, the lack of seeing each other, the families, the heartbreak?  
The heartbreak…  
That was it exactly.   
It was for pissing off homophobes…  
The only kid afraid of gayness was myself, and so I tried to blur it, blurring Frank into the background and bringing Lindsey into the light. Lindsey is amazing, I swear. She’s beautiful, funny, amazing, perfect…but she isn’t Frank…and I think she knows that…  
“Hi,” said Frank, dropping me that teensy little smile that years ago would’ve held a lip ring.  
People always remember the lip ring but not so much the mouth. I remember every crooked corner…  
I winced. This used to happen mostly on stage, too, and I could just grab him and kiss him, and have an excuse. There is no excuse for what I did next. I stood up with my cup of coffee in my hand and said, “Come on”, as if New Jersey was a perfectly safe city to stroll through casually.  
We walked silently, the two of us. Years ago, it was all bursts of ideas and colors and costumes and melodies and now, it was just, yeah, that sounds good, I guess. I guessed wrong.  
It was then 4:53 and we were walking along a brick wall by an alley, completely empty. I chucked my coffee cup against the wall and it split down the middle, spilling out the dregs that I had missed.  
“I was thinking,” Frank said slowly, and I pushed him into the wall and leaned into his mouth.  
It tasted the same, warm, soft, and kind of like smoke, and a bit like booze too, and you could taste the fact that he had barely smiled in months, but he smiled into my mouth just then, and I thought I had guessed right.   
I guessed wrong. I’m a fairly bad guesser myself.  
Frank started doing most of what he did on stage, moving his hands around, running his fingers clumsily through my hair, which was now more of a mousy brown than a jet black.  
And yet, I kept thinking, no, no, I will stop, no, no, NO, GOD DAMN IT GERARD, YOU CANNOT BE GAY, because despite what I say, despite what I support…I am very terrified of hell…but instead I kissed him back, harder, without meaning to. It was fucking cold outside, but I let him tear off my jacket, and run his hands over my shoulder blades, only mirroring what we had done years ago when it didn’t fucking matter. He used to be so SKINNY, too, we all did, but time adds weight to your soul and your soul weighs almost nothing to begin with but still, he let me run my hands up under his shirt anyway. And we both had to pretend that this was not now, when we were married and had love that was meant to be right rather than wrong and beautiful rather than secret, and God, Frank!  
And then you were alone, and drunk, and you have a baby, and your band, no, your heart breaks up, and you have to laugh at your sorry self.  
Pause, rewind, play, over and over.   
Pause, rewind, play, rewind, rewind, rewind, rewind, is that a fucking ring on the table?  
Oh, god. I looked at the ring and looked at Lindsey…she must’ve known…people know things about me before I do…  
“Gerard,” she said, and it stung, like a slap across the face.  
She was my front and center act, the perfect antivenom to my life, and she was not a fake…unless she knew…and she thought she was…  
I loved her. And it was Frank’s birthday before I knew it, and I didn’t care, tossing back shots like they were ones from revolvers into my stupid head.  
My phone rang three times, and first, I thought it’d wake up Bandit.  
BANDIT.   
Oh, God, Lindsey…  
I picked up the phone on the last ring, and it was Frank, all shaky and nervous.  
“Gerard,” he said tonelessly. “I need you back. N-not YOU YOU, like, you know what I mean…”  
“My Chemical Romance,” I said, sounding the full name out for the first time in months.  
“Please,” Frank said, his voice breaking.  
“I’m going to…” What, Gerard, meet up with the guy you fell in love with the night your wife leaves you? “Call you back. I need to…sleep…and think…”  
Yes, that was good.  
“All right,” Frank said sadly, and I felt terrible, but I said, “Happy birthday,” even though he might’ve hung up before he heard.  
Either way, he didn’t say thank you.  
***  
“LINDSEY! LINDSEY? LINDSEY!”  
I shook her, my eyes blurring with tears; my head spinning anxiously  
“Sir, she’s been legally dead for approximately five hours, she’s not waking up.”  
‘I did this,’ I thought.  
I never did get anything right…

 

 

FRANK

Whenever you watch a movie, you hold your breath when a character goes underwater, to see if you can last it out, to see if you could have survived…  
I could have survived Gerard, but he drowned me anyway.  
Drowning is said to be like depression, or is it the other way around? I got the two mixed up, because that was all I felt my entire life.  
One night stands are different when you’re married.  
Or when it’s your best friend.  
Or when it ends the very thing that gives you life.  
Gerard almost ended my life, a while back.  
We were in a fight, I knew, but he got fucking married, to some girl, after a fucking concert!  
It was a lie…pissing people off…I know…but I shouldn’t have even started it…it was an excuse, hell, my entire life is a fucking excuse for itself.  
3-22-13.  
I was in an alley in New Jersey, cold, my arms wrapped around Gerard Way, and almost believing that it wasn’t going to be one night. Gerard’s eyes were half-closed and one of his legs was draped over my left, and I honestly had no idea how we had managed to fuck in the middle of a dark alley in NJ, but god, was it worth it.  
I began to think that Gerard was asleep, but I didn’t move. I didn’t want to break the silence or the moment. I pretended that it was endless, but it was but The End.  
Lindsey told me that broken people are good at breaking things, and I believed her. I’m clumsy and stupid as hell, but still I managed to break no hearts but my own. I’m rather selective with love.  
Lindsey told me a lot of things, too…  
He used to cry over me…as if, honey…  
But she loved him, she told me that too, and what, did I expect him to leave her for me.  
Hell, I couldn’t bring myself to leave Jamia, never.  
Jamia was the second best thing to ever happen to me…but the press only covers the first place winner…  
I knew the moment when the band would break, and it was in five, four, three, two-Gerard stirred and blinked. He put a hand through his ruffled hair, turned, and remembered me.  
“Oh,” said Gerard. “Oh!” he repeated, this time as a moan of distress.  
He pulled on his jacket and clothes as fast as humanly possible, shying away from me and clumsily not looking me in the eyes.  
“Oh,” I said, partially to myself, and stood up, tugging my shirt down to hide any remnants of anything at all…that was what he wanted, right?  
I was wrong, he wanted a clean slate, a fresh start, a new life…one without me.  
Too fucking bad.  
I took a single stride towards Gerard and wrapped my mouth over his as gently as possible.  
Tugging away, Gerard looked into my eyes with his pretty as hell teary ones, and said: “My Chemical Romance is done.”  
I felt the world sink, smearing like graffiti paint into the walls of my heart, causing them to collapse without warning. This was worse than anything I had expected, maybe a cold glance, not talking for a week, maybe even a break from writing, but telling me it was OVER? Just like that?  
Gerard began to walk, kicking at the split-in-half coffee cup that he had thrown at the wall before…when we were still together.  
When I still felt like I WASN’T BEING RIPPED TO SHREDS BY A TERRIBLE DEMON THAT YOU FUCKING CONTROL, GERARD, AND IT’S SENDING ME TO HELL, but no…  
“Frank, I lo-“ Gerard said, but changed his mind.

***  
10-31-13.  
“Happy birthday,” said the voice of a torn woman, and I knew who it was, but I didn’t know why.  
“What do you want?” I said, my voice breaking from the smoke I had had just five minutes ago.  
My throat felt ragged and I think I was drunk too…the emotional kind where you get all stuck-in-a-corner-writing-music-y. Either way…  
“He’s yours,” Lindsey said.  
No. No. No. Nononononono, Lindsey, you didn’t break him, please no, God no.  
“I know that you love him so you can have him, I-I gave him back my ring, you’ve waited long enough, he’s yours, so fucking take him, Frank!”  
Gerard was mine.   
No, he wasn’t.  
He didn’t want me.  
“You didn’t,” I said, honestly terrified of what I would do.  
What Gerard would do to himself.  
“Happy birthday,” she said, and there was only dead air.  
And then I called Gerard.  
And he said yes…about the band, anyway.  
It was on the anniversary of our one night stand that we sang for the fans again.  
It felt alive, I didn’t know what it was, until I turned and Gerard kissed me, for the first time in a year.   
But for creatures to live, other creatures must die.  
Now that is drowning, see?  
Not watching someone else love another.  
Not watching someone else last it out.  
Not even watching yourself crash and burn.  
It is only watching yourself, and seeing that you are happy, but only because someone else is not.  
That gives you the worst sinking feeling in the world.  
And you end up not being able to breathe.  
11-1-63  
“Bury him with his wife,” I said.


End file.
